USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010710.0648 (On Screen): The constitution of Indonesia gives the Parliament the ability to impeach the President. It also gives the President the ability to dissolve Parliament. If I were a judge in Indonesia, I would rule the former to override the latter.

President Wahid, a sick and broken man, is fighting to preserve himself (wearing the cape of "for the good of the nation") but is probably not going to succeed. I sincerely hope he does not actually take the step of ordering parliament to be dissolved, because it will cause a crisis. The good news is that the military and police have told him they won't cooperate, so it may not come to that. But if it did, then it either will be settled in the streets with a high body count, or it will be settled in the courts. So let's be judges for a moment, OK?

If the constitutional power of the parliament to impeach the president could be trumped by the power of the president to dissolve parliament, then impeachment could never occur and there would be no point in putting the impeachment clause in the constitution. Clearly those who wrote and ratified the constitution thought it was important, so they clearly did not intend to let the president prevent it.

On the other hand, that's a two-edged sword. If taken to the other extreme, it could be used by parliament to prevent itself from ever being dissolved, since if the president ever announced the intention of doing so then parliament could rush through articles of impeachment (even if frivolous and unjustified). It's an interesting problem.

The real difficulty is that their governmental form is designed badly. Israel has done it correctly: it has both a President and a Prime Minister. The President is elected to a fixed term, and the President has the ability to dissolve the Knesset. However, aside from that the office of President is largely ceremonial and uncontroversial, since executive power resides mostly in the office of Prime Minister, who cannot dissolve the Knesset and who is constitutionally controlled by it. The Knesset can dissolve itself and order new elections through a vote of no confidence, which would also result in selection of a new prime minister. In Indonesia, the office of president represents a merger of the two offices of president and prime minister in Israel, leading to constitutional deadlock. (discuss)